(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display.
(b) Description of Related Art
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are a type of widely used flat panel display. A liquid crystal display includes two display panels each having field-generating electrodes, such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode, and a liquid crystal layer interposed therebetween. The liquid crystal display generates an electric field through a liquid crystal layer by applying a voltage to field generating electrodes, determines the alignment of liquid crystal molecules in the liquid crystal layer therethrough, and controls the polarization of incident light, thereby displaying an image.
The liquid crystal display also includes switching elements connected to pixel electrodes and a plurality of signal lines, such as gate lines and data lines, for supplying voltages to the pixel electrodes. The gate lines transmit gate signals that are generated by a gate driving circuit, and the data lines transmit data voltages that are generated by a data driving circuit. The switching elements transmit the data voltages to the pixel electrodes in accordance with the gate signals.
The gate driving circuit and data driving circuit are directly mounted on a display panel in forms of a plurality of integrated circuit (IC) chips. Alternatively, the gate driving circuit and data driving circuit are mounted on a flexible circuit film and the flexible circuit film is attached on the display panel. Such IC chips are responsible for a large percentage of the manufacturing cost of a liquid crystal display. Moreover, a data driver IC chip is more expensive than a gate driving circuit IC chip. The manufacturing cost of the gate driving circuit can be reduced by integrating the gate driving circuit in the display panel along with the gate lines, the data lines, and the switching elements. However, it is difficult to integrate the data driving circuit in the display panel because the data driving circuit has a complicated structure.
Therefore, a need exists to reduce the number of data driver ICs.